Is Portland’s neighborhood involvement system broken?

The level of anger among Portland neighborhoods is palpable. The promise of Portland’s neighborhood involvement system, a noble creation of activists of the 1970s and 1980s, is now in doubt. Instead of focusing on the core agenda of empowering grass-roots democracy and participation, too much of the focus seems to be on “turf protection,” “damage control,” blaming “NIMBYs” and suppressing “troublemakers.” Too many competing agendas – many of them unaccountable special interests – are acting to suppress healthy democratic debate and grass-roots problem-solving.

What are the key issues? We see four main areas of concern:

– Funding equity. Surely each citizen should receive, through their local neighborhood association, an equitable share of the support provided by the City for neighborhood involvement and participatory budgeting. At present, funding disparity is an unacceptable condition for many East Portland neighborhoods, and for neighborhoods with significant minority populations. More broadly, it is an issue for all neighborhoods, whose democratic participation and financial equity are diluted and filtered by coalition bureaucracies, and by misguided attempts to insert competing “non-geographic communities” in a heavy-handed, hodge-podge fashion.– Direct and meaningful democratic representation.All neighborhood associations should be free to form coalitions and caucuses so as to magnify their influence on issues of common concern. However, the current non-profit coalition system, which was created and imposed by the City, has produced significant problems. Most seriously, it introduces an extraneous, essentially unaccountable unit of governance (i.e. a State-recognized non-profit corporation, which is a legal person outside of City governance). This structure causes interference with democratic representation, by introducing a discontinuous layer of administrative bureaucracy. Because it is a separate corporate person, it does not and cannot operate effectively within the accountable system of City governance. This extraneous layer must be reformed.– Efficiency, transparency and accountability of support. Funding and other forms of support should be leveraged to provide maximum impact with maximum transparency and accountability. All actions should focus on direct citizen participation, participatory budgeting and capacity to act within their own neighborhoods. However, as noted previously, the current coalition system inserts a series of bureaucratic layers, inefficiencies, and competing (sometimes unaccountable) agendas.– Subsidiarity and meaningful participation.The principle of “subsidiary governance” relies upon the recognition that ultimately, “all politics is local.” It follows that all other levels of government are subsidiary and should be in the business of empowering the most local units. While other non-geographic communities can and should be recognized, they should not be placed into competition with the neighborhoods and their associations, or within the Office of Neighborhood Involvement. Geographic representation is a fundamental principle of American governance, and therefore, the focus must be on maximizing participation by excluded communities within the neighborhood associations themselves – not by placing the City’s “thumb on the scale” and diluting the authentic democratic participation of neighborhoods and their citizens with City-selected “non-geographic” entities.

Portland has an internationally celebrated neighborhood involvement system — but the evidence is that it has become complacent, stagnant and dysfunctional. Both the new mayor Wheeler and Commissioner Eudaly have been elected with a mandate for reform. The moment of opportunity is present, but limited. The time for reform has arrived.

I agree, we need a MUCH more accountable, democratic and reprsentative NA system. But I think that is done by working WITH the NAs to reform, not by creating new “non-geographic entities” that dilute and sideline the NAs.

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Welcome! This forum presents an alternate perspective on the current challenges facing the city of Portland, Oregon. What effective solutions are available? What is the actual evidence that they will work, or not? How can these lessons be applied in Portland? We will pass along regular entries on timely issues from other parts of the world, comparing notes on our challenges here. We will also offer our own commentaries and those of Portland-area colleagues.

Portland is rightly regarded as an important global model of urbanism and of urban successes. Portland started with the advantage of small blocks, facilitating walkability; the Urban Growth Boundary was created in the 1970s, about the same time a freeway along the waterfront was replaced with Tom McCall Waterfront Park; Portlanders’ love of their natural setting ensured tree-lined streets and efforts to protect views of snow-capped Mt. Hood; a proposed multi-story garage in the city center became Pioneer Courthouse Square in 1984, thanks to community effort, and many other squares and parks have followed; a streetcar system and light rail were started, which gradually helped to generate suburban neighborhood centers, improving walkability; a compact mixed-use neighborhood began to replace the old industrial area of the Pearl District, initially at a good human scale; and early development of bike lanes positioned Portland as a leading US city for bicycle planning.

But we must be honest: Portland is also, and increasingly of late, a model of what can go wrong. But that too is an invaluable contribution to share with other cities, as they share their lessons with us. In that process, we may all learn from our mistakes as well as our successes, and find a path to becoming better cities. We may thereby reverse the downward spiral of so many cities today, including Portland – losing their affordability, losing their diversity, losing their architectural heritage, and becoming places of isolation, homelessness, traffic congestion and – for too many – economic stagnation, and declining quality of life.

Our chief bloggers are Suzanne Lennard and Michael Mehaffy, both with Ph.D. degrees in architecture (at UC Berkeley and Delft University of Technology, respectively) but also with wide interests in sociology, public health, anthropology, psychology, economics, public affairs, and above all, the ingredients of livable, sustainable cities, and how we can get and keep them. This perspective is informed by seminal scholars in urban issues including Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, William H. Whyte, Christopher Alexander, Lewis Mumford and others, and also by cutting-edge new research. We hope you'll find it thought-provoking at least, and find some of the ideas inspiring, as we have...